Author:Holly Green
Can she escape her past?
Patty Jenkins has come a long way from her poverty-stricken days in Brownlow workhouse.
She now has a coveted position in the kitchens at Freeman's Department store in Liverpool and even the prospect of advancement. For Patty has always enjoyed baking and her flair for it has caught the attention of the store owner who intends to have her create elaborate cakes and pastries to serve at afternoon tea to Freeman's clientele.
But when you're a workhouse girl you can never quite forgive your past and when you've fallen on hard times before, you're always aware how easy it is to lose everything...
McCracken is a firecracker stylist and every sentence, every image, is crafted for physical impact… It is exuberant, a bit bonkers and raw and unflinching. It will find a great many fans – and no doubt some awards, too.
—— Lucy Atkins , Sunday TimesA big, glorious novel in every sense, this sprawling family saga… is a funny and big-hearted epic from a seriously gifted wordsmith.
—— Samantha Irby , Marie ClaireMcCracken’s rambunctious saga [Bowlaway]… is a funhouse of a novel. Even the most incidental of characters are granted glorious vignettes… in [an] unpredictable and startling world.
—— Wendy Erskine , Spectator[McCracken has] considerable gifts as a novelist [and] instinctive access to the most intricate threads of human thought and feeling... This novel’s cast grows epic, but McCracken is always most impressive when she works small, when she is describing movie kisses or corsets or simply loneliness and longing.
—— New York TimesDeath and life, frosted with macabre comedy: it’s why we’ve enjoyed Elizabeth McCracken since her debut novel, The Giant’s House… nothing is ordinary in this story… There’s a wickedness to McCracken’s technique, the way she lures us in with her witty voice and oddball characters but then kicks the wind out of us… endlessly surprising.
—— Ron Charles , Washington PostBowlaway is that most improbable of literary phenomena: a buoyant, joyful, rollicking yarn of sadness and loss... McCracken’s gloriously vibrant and boisterously surprising narrative voice is one of the great triumphs of Bowlaway... A tour de force.
—— Boston GlobeWildly entertaining... [A] wonderfully unpredictable multi-generational saga which revolves around a Massachusetts bowling alley... Bowlaway celebrates the oddest of oddballs and the freakiest of freak accidents with wit and heart. To read McCracken’s inimitably clever sentences and follow her quirky narrative twists is to be constantly delighted.
—— NPRIrresistibly quirky… Packed with Dickensian characters and plot devices (orphans, secret wills, hidden treasure…), [Bowlaway is] lyrical and humorous, with some dazzlingly inventive twists. A family saga unlike any other.
—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on SundayMcCracken’s imaginative reserves and her delight in outlandish events make [Bowlaway]… a kind of fable – a colourful and often captivating fantasia on New England themes.
—— New YorkerMcCracken’s newest novel, a 20th-century family epic centered on candlepin bowling, is populated by strange, excellent characters, and unfolds with all the offbeat coziness and heartache of a great American fable: molasses floods, workplace fires, surprising heirs, and all.
—— Vanity FairMcCracken’s book is a little McCrackers – a woman falls from the sky, lands in a graveyard and survives to open a bowling alley… there’s a strong American Gothic, magical realism feel… But who is she really? Or any of us, come to that? As we follow Bertha and her family down the generations, the answer seems to be that people are strange, life is random and what matters is love.
—— Wendy Holden , Daily MailAt the turn of the 20th century a woman is discovered unconscious and nearly frozen in a New England cemetery with only a bowling ball, a candlepin, and 15 pounds of gold on her. The National Book Award finalist’s exuberantly weird and wonderful book unravels the mystery.
—— O, the Oprah MagazineBowlaway snatches up every individual that finds joy or tragedy in proximity to the bowling alley and allows them to be observed tenderly and precisely... McCracken’s love of language is the catching kind... In Bowlaway, the journey through McCracken’s lush, piercing prose is the destination.
—— Austin ChronicleReading Elizabeth McCracken—the gorgeously-put-together sentences parading the pages like models on a Paris runway; the crazy, original insights; the definitive, wholly fictional pronouncements—is like going on an automotive safari... I could not stop reading.
—— NewsdayMcCracken’s delightful prose and rich historical details make this the perfect book to get lost in.
—— Real Simple[An] accomplished novel.
—— iPassionate and comically self-aware romanticizing of candlepin bowling itself… genius… McCracken’s… delightful voice and poetic facility have been present since her debut novel… Bowlaway…[is] a towering, hearty, multi-tiered cake, dazzling and confident in its construction.
—— Kim Fu , Times Literary SupplementStorytelling at its very best
—— Daily MailEvocative, compelling, told from the heart
—— Sunday ExpressGlorious, heartwarming
—— Woman & HomeIntriguing, heart-tugging, beautifully written
—— CloserRidker's debut is at once humorous and poignant.
—— Library JournalEloquent… style and smooth pacing.
—— SkinnyComedy ahoy!
—— Strong WordsRidker handles the tussle between parent and children with humour and psychological insight… He is a sure comic talent, witty and engaged, and alive to the legion of competing and irreconcilable roles from which the individual today must self-consciously choose.
—— John Maier , Literary Review